Grace
by Morrigain Sangre
Summary: "It is not a song of home returning. It is a song of home long lost." Shartan does not understand his barbarian warrior-queen - but then, no one will. Can be read as Andraste/Shartan.


He finds her singing with the dawn, before the vanguard of the army, in a field of flowers.

The songs that Shartan knows are heavy with drums, with the beat of iron on iron, grain on earth, whip on flesh. They are songs for the thunder of a heart or the marching feet of righteous men. He pauses in the shadow of the trees, listening to the music falling from the lips of the woman before him like a wash of rain, of sunshine after storm.

Andraste does not sing in camp. She speaks, yes; she speaks of fire and damnation and benediction, of towers thrown down, of golden halls melted as vengeance for the City on high. Shartan has heard her shouts in battle, the righteous fury of her sermons, whispered prayers at dawn and murmurs of strength and courage to her men in the morning. He has never heard her sing.

It is a simple tune, spare, the music of a fisherman's daughter from a city far to the south that Shartan will never see. There are no drumbeats in this song, no clash of swords. No watchful judging god. It reminds him off the elder's songs that have never truly been his, murmured under breath after the Imperium masters had gone to sleep, passed from lip to cradle and into the grave in never more than a whisper. And yet it is not that, either.

It is not a song of a home returning. It is a song of a home long lost.

He watches in that field of white flowers, spinning slowly like the girl she used to be, watches her pluck one of the flowers and press it to her cheek. It is a lily, pale and slender as she is not – the early-dawn light catches on the scars on her fingers and arms, uncovered by armor, the hard lines of her shoulders and legs trained by months on the march, the dark uncombed mess of her hair, and he knows that if she turns he will see her face that a Magister once called _more like a barbarian wolf than a girl,_ but that does not matter. She is his commander and would be his queen, if she'd allow it. His equal, if Shartan himself would allow it, if that word will ever sit comfortably on his tongue as he looks up at this strange human woman and takes her orders as to where to send her troops, this woman who will give him a _home. _He understands, for the hundredth time, why men follow her.

For the hundredth time, he understands that he would die for her.

He holds his breath as Andraste finishes her song, and when she leaves to wake the army – don her armor, heft sword and shield with sunburst on the face – he slips into the clearing and finds the flower that she has dropped, perfectly white and already wilting on the stem.

_Grace, _he thinks, recalling the memory of long ago, an aunt or cousin who'd helped him carry vases of them inside for a Magister's party when he was a boy. The elvish word was rough and foreign on her tongue. Badly accented. But it was a word, a bit of their history, precious, and she'd taken his small boy's hand in her own and pointed. Given him this little piece of their people. _We call this flower 'grace,' Shartan, _his mother or cousin had told him, impressing it upon him until he'd mimicked her and gotten the strange word mostly right: _grace._

Shartan smiles. Andraste has no grace, not that the Magisters would say; she is all sharp lines and the weight of a sword, the snarl of a barbarian face shouting out justice and salvation. She is too tall, too scarred, too loud, not breakable or beguiling enough, and all her grace lies on her tongue. In speech and song. But they love her, they do – her men, all of them, and Maferath, who knows her body, and her Maker who knows her dreams.

And him.

He cuts the stem of _grace _short with a jagged nail and places it in his pocket.

It is there through the coming battle, the sky growing dark with arrows at his word, a thousand swords unsheathing at hers, man and elf in formation side by side. It is there all through the battle and the next, and the next, as they light the land on fire and strike off chains, and he stands at her right hand as she breaks the lines of the Magister Lords and brings their cities crashing down. As their army swells and he begins, finally, to plan – of a city as great as old Arlathan, of a land where his people can stand free, of a _home._

It is there as their army stretches long over the land, miles upon miles of marching men, foraging ahead and salting behind, bringing down a hunger stronger than any scourge that he felt across his back as a boy. It is there when they stay up late into the night, Andraste and her generals, Cathaire, Havard, these men who learned strategy at their father's knees, as they spread out maps before him and try their best to treat him as an equal. He sits at the table with them, at Andraste's side, and he does not have to look up to meet their eyes. It is there as her husband arrives and takes her to his tent and he remembers that she is mortal like the rest of them, belongs to more than her Maker and her men, to her disciples and to _him, _remembers the girl in the field of flowers before dawn instead of the armored Almarri queen.

He touches the flower against his heart, her little lily-white song pressed against the martial drum of his, and he thinks of that girl as the night grows long and he looks northward and imagines the lights of Minrauthos in the distance, steadily growing closer, the lights of victory and home.

He has not heard her sing since that morning in the field, but the flower is there, dried and pressed thin as a whisper. It is thin and brown and brittle, yes. More fragile than paper, fragile as his dream of home once was, but it is there.

It is there, even, with the next dawn. The sun breaks red and bloody over the horizon and Shartan is one of the first awake, the first to see the _Magisters _in the camp, and he yells and springs to his feet. There is a bow in his hand and an arrow already on the string when he hears that snap, that familiar stillness from his youth, the cloud in his head and sand in his veins and too-strong scent of blood. He watches one of the Magisters press the knife deeper into the cut across his palm and smile at him over the packed dirt of the clearing in the camp. Watches the tent open and his commander, his queen, his equal walk out unarmored, calm despite the bindings on her hands, not looking at her husband behind her who holds the tethers like she is a songbird on a leash.

"I will go peacefully," she says. She sounds like nothing Shartan knows. He has heard her shout and scream in battle, heard her rage, heard her plan in the small hours of the night, heard her voice in fury and exultation and despair. Now it is none of these things. "I will go with you, if this is what the Maker wills."

She does not look at her husband. She looks at him.

One of the Magisters laughs, spits. It lands on her face but Andraste does not blink, does not flinch, lifts her chin and steps forward. But Shartan knows these Magisters, he _knows, _knows what they want and what they like to see, and he cries out as the man curses. Words like _barbarian bitch _are on his lips as he raises a hand against Andraste, hits her hard, sends her on her knees into the dirt as the rest of the Magisters laugh.

The magic holding him snaps and he fights them, then, but they are Magisters of the Imperium and he is a single man who used to be a slave, barely even worth their effort and their magic. He hears her calling "_Shartan!"_ as he burns, hears her calling _"no!" _as they freeze and curse him, as his blood is not his own, as he falls to his knees with a knife in his back and another between his ribs, a knife scoring the _grace _against his skin. He has woken the camp at least; he must have woken the camp. He hears commotion, hears shouts of outrage, hears the Magisters yelling that they need to leave, Maferath demanding his compensation, someone – Cathaire – shouting, the army stirring and the crackle and hiss of spell as they begin to burn their way out. His hands are in the dirt and the dirt is wet with his own blood but he can raise his head, at least, and see her – Andraste, manacled, blood and bruise across her face, being led away by a Magister dressed in finery and gold. He is the one with the ends of her chains in her hands but she is the one doing the leading, her head high. He can see her. He can see the scars on her dirt-streaked skin, see the harshness of her face that no one would ever call _beautiful. _His commander and his equal and his queen. He can see, for the first time since that morning, the fisherman's daughter in her eyes.

Shartan watches her away until his eyes can see no more, until it is just the sound of her, over the clank of a slave's chains and the fading sounds of battle beginning all around him.

She is singing.


End file.
